Over the past year, the Aalborg Climate Alliance has worked hard to begin the process of launching Local Green Deals (LGDs). This involves local governments setting up partnerships with businesses, stakeholder organisations, and civil society initiatives to localise the EU Green Deal, agreeing to specific actions that support the city’s sustainability goals. In other words, ICLEI Member Aalborg (Denmark) is establishing voluntary and mutually-binding climate partnerships with relevant actors.
The reflection that follows – adapted from an original version written in Danish by Mona Carlsen, Communications Officer for the Climate Alliance, Aalborg Municipality – explores Aalborg’s experiences setting up climate partnerships and exchanging insights with counterparts in ICLEI Member Amsterdam (the Netherlands) as they work through the same process.
ICLEI Europe is supporting Aalborg and Amsterdam as they engage small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in LGDs and co-design an LGD template, all in the context of the CLIMAA project. Key to their success is Aalborg and Amsterdam regularly exchanging experiences and knowledge across borders, focusing on jointly developing methods for building climate partnerships.
Zooming in on Aalborg
In 2020, the Danish Parliament adopted a climate law committing Denmark to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 70% by 2030 compared to 1990 levels, and to achieve climate-neutrality by 2045. Aalborg’s local Climate Action Plan is already aligned with these goals, and any local partnership agreements are therefore naturally linked to their achievement. However, Aalborg Municipality does not have the mandate to directly address a significant part of the city’s emissions, and they must therefore support and facilitate companies to work toward green transition.
“We will not achieve our climate ambitions without our local businesses,” says Kristoffer Wolsing, CLIMAA coordinator at Aalborg Municipality. “This is reflected in the local climate partnership agreements, where a local stakeholder and Aalborg Municipality commit to sustainable actions within a given time period… We expect to create a so-called ‘green wave’ that will spread, so that together with our local business community we can achieve our climate goals and inspire other European cities to enter into similar agreements.”
To this end, Aalborg and Amsterdam convened workshops for local companies, and regularly exchanged insights to refine guidance on working with SMEs on green transformation.
The CLIMAA project has now entered its final phase, in which the methodology for launching LGDs is being finalised, and both cities are working to sign at least 10 climate partnerships by May 2023.
This work is, of course, well underway. Aalborg has, for example, finalised a number of climate partnerships, including one with the local transport company Aalborg Vognmandsforretning (AVAS).
“Knowing that we have undertaken measures to reduce our CO2 emissions gives us extra motivation,” explains Helle B. Holm, environmental coordinator at AVAS. “Running a business with the climate in mind can pose some challenges! That's why it's nice to have a partner with the same goal that you can work with… We expect that having entered into a climate partnership will bring us closer to our climate goals, as we cannot reduce CO2 emissions if our customers, including Aalborg Municipality, do not choose the green solution. Through partnerships we stand much stronger!”
In other words, the climate partnerships that are at the core of LGDs are mutual: companies make binding agreements, and so does the local government. To a large extent, these partnerships are about leveraging a municipality’s networking capacity to support its climate goals and partners.
As the CLIMAA project enters its final stage, Aalborg, Amsterdam, and their partners have worked out a comprehensive process for entering into climate partnership agreements. This has strengthened Aalborg Climate Alliance’s internal work, and has helped them select climate partners and further refine the content of future climate partnership agreements.
Read more about the Climate Alliance Aalborg here. Learn more about the CLIMAA project at: https://climaa.localgreendeals.eu/.